Trashy Reputation

So, I had a shorter weekend than normal thanks to my job—specifically, the DOT, the Department of Transportation. They are the government agency tasked with harassing truck drivers. Apparently, they don’t take too kindly to a guy (me) driving a truck that’s 2,400 lbs. over weight. And they felt compelled to tell me all about it in lengthy detail.

This was not news to me. After nearly two decades on this job, I’ve heard it all before. And in fact, the scenario that ensued has happened before—right down to how it ends.

The officer was fairly new to the job, I guess because he didn’t seem to know much about the company I drive for. He seemed to think it was necessary to covey how abhorrent it was that I was hauling all that weight illegally and how harmful it was for the road. The highway just isn’t designed to handle that much weight, he claimed. (Never mind that all a guy has to do is purchase an extended weight permit and then it’s perfectly acceptable to drive the same truck down the same road). He also informed me that anything more than 2000 lbs. over weight had to be legalized before allowing the driver to proceed. It’s not discretionary.

That meant I’d be sitting there until someone could come and fix my load, which would be several hours. That wasn’t at all appealing to me; Friday night, the weekend coming up, and by the time the load was legalized, I would be out of hours. That meant an additional 10 hours before I could leave. All this because I was, “just simply hauling too much weight.”

I didn’t argue, not much point in that, although I may have mentioned something to the effect that I didn’t care.

I think the guy was prepared to continue the lecture when the other officer on duty came over to see what was going on. After having the first guy explain the situation, he gave the man a perplexed look. “Do you know what he’s hauling?” he asked. Then, he answered his own question. “Garbage. He’s hauling garbage. Issue a citation and let him go.”

I got the feeling they didn’t want me around for some reason! Apparently, they don’t think much of having a full semi load of raw garbage sitting around smelling up the place. And the thought of having someone come to dig out part of the load right there on their lot isn’t appealing either. I guess that rule that was not discretionary actually wasn’t all that ironclad after all.

Soon I was on my way—with a citation, of course. But the company takes care of those so all the little episode cost me was a little time—­about an hour. I think somebody owes me an extra weekend hour! Maybe I’ll go to work a little late today and call it even. ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Overweight, Again

As regular readers of this blog know, I am a truck driver in my “real” life. I haul bulk garbage from the city to the desert in a semi, usually around 70,000 pounds per trip. And just in case anyone is wondering, that is a LOT of garbage. Fortunately, I do not dump it, or load it for that matter. All I do is drive the truck, drop the trailer, and then go get another load.

Due to sudden braking or other driving-related causes, the wet garbage can sometimes shift, and over the years, I’ve had my share of overweight fines. Normally, the loads are pre-weighed and legal—we don’t have to scale the truck, we just drive. If there is a problem, the company pays the ticket, since the driver has no way of knowing if the weight is legal or not. Because the company pays and the ticket doesn’t go on the driver’s record, we don’t really get too excited about it. The only thing I don’t like is that it costs me time. For some reason, the DOT is never concerned with my time, though.

About a week ago, I was thinking that it had been a while since I’d had a ticket. I shouldn’t have been thinking, I guess, because last Friday, I had the privilege of getting pulled into the scales on the freeway and then told to park and bring my papers—like I was in a foreign country or something. Once inside the building, I got to chat with the guy about how I was (apparently, single-handedly) responsible for the rutted condition of the roads. Nevermind the fact that if my company, or any company, wanted to haul more weight all they have to do is pay a little more money and the extended weight permit is amended to allow for whatever weight they want or need. So, it’s not really about the roads, but as most things with government are, it’s the money.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox and back to the story... Turns out, my entire truck was not overweight, just the drivers—the wheels on the tractor—they were 2,300 pounds over the limit. The trailer was about 3000 pounds underweight, which meant the load had obviously shifted. I was given a citation and instructed to legalize my load before leaving. Great! There was just one problem with that.

Most semis have the ability to move the weight around using sliding tandems or fifth wheels. The trucks at my job have neither. Which meant the only way for me to legalize my load was to back up as fast as I could get going and then slam on the brakes. This technique is sort of frowned upon by the DOT. Not that they care about the truck or the load, they are only concerned with the damage it may do to their lot! That didn’t concern me much; what I was concerned with is getting home on a Friday night. But as you can imagine, this method of moving the weight around is far from a scientific approach. It took several re-weighs before I was legal. Finally, an hour after pulling into the scale I was on my way.

But then, just before hitting the freeway, I HAD to hit my brakes—pretty hard too. And I felt the load come rushing back to the front of the trailer. So after an hour, and a citation, nothing had changed; I was right back to being overweight on the drivers! But I wouldn’t have done that on purpose—would I? ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Okie Engineering

Note: This is Read-An-Ebook-Week. My books, Miscarriage Of Justice, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and The Only Bible The King James Version are 50% off at Smashwords. Use Code REW50 at check out. http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders

Okie engineering is the meeting of necessity with an adequate amount of knowledge and ability to make things work. It’s not always pretty but it does serve to get the job done. Sometimes, Okie engineering is brilliant mechanics and sometimes it’s just practical common sense. Either way, it usually saves time and money and comes in quite handy. I use it all the time - and I’m not even from Oklahoma. Fixing broken things without the right tools and without the right parts may not produce a grand masterpiece - but if it works then who cares, right?

Well, the answer to that is: professional people or government inspectors. (I’m not entirely sure the last category counts). Apparently, both groups frown on unorthodox methods of rigging things together, even temporarily.

Several years ago, when I first started driving a truck for a living, I was cruising down the highway late one rainy Friday night. The steady hum of the tires on the pavement was interrupted by my low-air warning buzzer and then the bright red light came on. Almost as suddenly, my brakes locked up. Contrary to popular belief, when a semi loses air, it does not lose the brakes, rather it loses the ability to release the brakes. A complete loss of air means the truck is not going anywhere except very quickly to the side of the road. The nice part was that with the rain, the eight trailer tires slid easily off to the shoulder.

And so, there I was alongside the road, not able to move. It didn’t take long to find the problem. One of the main air lines on the trailer had been cut completely in two. (This was sort of odd considering these air lines are about an inch thick, reinforced hard rubber). I didn’t have much for tools (a Gerber all-purpose tool on my belt) and had no parts. An extra air line would have been nice but then, I would’ve had no way to make a splice anyway. After determining the line had been too loose and swaying back and forth, I saw what had severed it - the spare tire rack.

Returning to the cab, I looked through the junk in my toolbox, hoping to find something I could use. I did. A roll of duct tape. Knowing the tape would never stick to the air line, which was covered with an oily road-grime, I used a can of Coke to clean it, drying the line with a rag. As anyone who’s ever wiped up spilled soda can imagine, that left things pretty sticky. I wrapped a single layer of tape around the line to hold the two parts together - barely. With 120 pounds of pressure that would be going through the line, the duct tape would provide an initial seal but would never hold by itself once the system was charged with air. I soon solved that.

Finding three large paper clips, I used the file on my Gerber to sharpen the ends and pushed them through the ends of the air line. The third paper clip was used to twist all three together. This would keep the two lines from pulling apart but it was still flimsy. I needed something to provide more strength. Spotting a small tree limb from the shoulder of the road, I used the knife on my Gerber to shave it into a splint. Then, attaching the splint to the splice, I covered it all with half a roll of duct tape. I still had eighty miles to go to the terminal and I crossed my fingers as I pulled back onto the road.

The mechanic on duty took a look at my handiwork when I pulled into the shop and I could tell he wasn’t impressed. Shaking his head, he pulled things apart and fixed it the “right” way. “You’re lucky you didn’t have to cross a scale,” he said. “The DOT (government inspectors) would never let that Okie engineering pass.”

It didn’t bother me that he found no use for my repair job. “It worked,” I told him. “And it saved you from going on a service call on a Friday night.”

He didn’t answer.

A few years later - or slightly more than a few, time flies when you’re having fun - I was going across a scale when an ever-observant weighmaster heard an air leak. After finding the leak, he showed it to me - a sizeable hole in an air line. And after he messed with it a while, the hole grew even larger, in fact, it was barely holding together. He told me he would have to put the truck out of service.

Great, I thought. Friday night, just a few miles from home and there I sat. It would be several hours before my company could send a mechanic.

“Looks like you’ll be here awhile,” the DOT guy said as he started filling out the paperwork. “Unless... Can you fix it?”

“Uh, sure,” I answered, recalling that I had a roll of duct tape in the truck. And paper clips. And I still carried my Gerber.

An hour later, I rolled across the scale with the weighmaster outside listening carefully for air leaks. Then, shining his flashlight under the trailer, I saw him shake his head. But, he gave me the thumbs up, and I hit the road.

That mechanic years ago was wrong. Apparently, I can get my Okie engineering past the DOT!

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter, has over 500 songs and more than a dozen books. Over My Dead Body, The Journey, and Miscarriage Of Justice, his latest books, are available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. Now also available in print at many online retailers or at www.bruceabordersbooks.weebly.com. The popular Wynn Garrett Series Books are now available on Barnes And Noble® at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?series_id=867526

Missing History

Never trust the history books. Sometimes they get it wrong. Or, they simply leave out important events altogether.

Take for instance, the year, 1967. Many significant things happened that year, not the least of which was me being born. Yes, contrary to the popular speculation of some (my wife), I was indeed born and not hatched.

Sorry, I get sidetracked easily. Back to my point.

Among the notable events of 1967 are: the Apollo Missions, the first heart transplant, the first Superbowl, and as I already mentioned, my birth. I may be biased but I view the latter as the single most important event of the year. (It’s okay, I’ll understand if you don’t see it quite that way).

On the darker side, other events of the year include: the Six Day War, Colorado becoming the first state to legalize abortion, and the forming of the Department of Transportation. 1967 was also a year marked by nationwide race riots.

All this I knew. In preparation for this post, and to see what other stellar events occurred that year, I turned to the history books, which these days are on the Internet. Visiting a well-known online encyclopedia website, I learned that 1967 was the year of the first live, nationwide satellite TV production, the first ATM (then called an automatic cash machine), Sesame Street made its debut, the pocket calculator was invented, and the first Boeing 737 took flight.

I found these somewhat trivial facts to be interesting and impressive. Yet, strangely missing was anything that occurred on April 3rd of that year. I refined my search. The results?

“No significant events for this date.”

Really?

I checked several other websites. All of them agreed – nothing worth mentioning occurred on April 3, 1967. Hmm. Are they all in cahoots with my wife, or what? I was sure that’s the date I was born. Just to make certain, I dug out my birth certificate, and there it was in black and white. I was born on April 3, 1967. For some odd reason, that earth-shattering event has been overlooked; omitted from the historical record! I’m shocked! Appalled! How could this have happened?

Shrug. Sigh. It just goes to show, you can’t trust the history books.

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and 9 books. Over My Dead Body, and The Journey, his latest books, are available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. For more information, visit http://www.bruceaborders.com/. See Bruce’s Amazon Author Page at www.amazon.com/author/bruceaborders or view his Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders